Entitled VISIBLE BASS LINE , this is a welcome addition to Lowri Blake's own-label discography. The double act has Peter Buckoke, the excellent bass player of the equally excellent Schubert Ensemble of London, supporting Lowri Blake, virtuoso cellist who also sings as she plays. They are regularly to be heard in London and elsewhere. Lowri additionally strikes the 18 bells in the most challenging piece here, Angelus by Diana Burrell (1986), 'mysterious and nocturnal, yet alert' their liner notes tell us.

Classics and favourite jazzy songs are purposely juxtaposed to strike sparks off each other and undermine category separations. Barriere is a specialty of Lowri's and his sonatas repay attention. Pleyel's variations challenge both instruments (it is the bass which has the high harmonics in No.6) and Offenbach and Bizet are both subjected to irreverent compression in Orpheus and Carmen (pace Mr Dyer http://musicweb.vavo.com/classrev/2001/Oct01/Dyertribes_Carmen.htm, but in my book neither is sacrosanct nor subject to a protection order).

I'm not clear what we are meant to do with the spare second at the end, but in Faster - the acceleration of just about everything (Abacus), an obligatory read for the new millennium - we learn from James Gleick that seconds are no longer precise enough and we have to think in nano-seconds.

Recommended, and visit Lowri Blake's website www.lowrirecords.com
where, to get the idea, you can sample clips from Schnittke and
My Baby Just Cares For Me!
Peter Grahame Woolf

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